Family home worth approx €800k with a €250k mortgage
Savings of €800k cash
Defined Contribution pension fund: €100k x 2
Shares : 15k approx invested in stock market
not at all what you'd hope for on a 1.2mish budget.
So you have €1.36m cash after you sell your house.
You also seem to have a lump of cash in the company.
You are starting off with the wrong question: "mortgage-free?"
Why do you want to be mortgage-free?
We don't know your true income, but it's probably about €250k a year.
You can comfortably borrow € 500k.
You can well afford the type of house you want in the location you want. But you can't buy your current house on an acre in the sticks in a seaside commuter belt for €1.2m.
Make some compromises but buy a house you like for about €1.7m.
Then, start maxing your pension contributions from the company.
Our accountant has it set up that we can wind down the company in our fifties and take large tax-free lump sum payment (500k or so?)
You can be too clever with tax planning. This might work but you are forgoing the use of this money for another 10 years or so when you could use it now. Probably not as tax-efficient to take it out now, but you will get 10 years use of this money.
And there is a huge risk, that the tax rules will change and this brilliant tax plan may no longer be effective.
I would say that if you are planning to definitely wind up a company in about 3 years, maybe even up to 5, you could leave profits in it to avail of tax planning. But more than 5 seems to risky to me.
Brendan